Hello ROOT users,
Can some experts out there tell me if Fedora Cora is well tested and stable for ROOT. I see that binaries are available for FC2, but we would like to install FC3 or FC4 on our new server. Which one would be suggested? I am thinking FC3 would be the best, what is your opinion?
Much thanks
Hi,
I am not a ROOT expert but I installed ROOT 5.08 from source to FC3 and it works fine.
Thanks for the feedback.
While talking about Fedora Core:
I wonder why there are no rpm prebuilds for FC3, FC4, SL 3 and SL4, only the binary packages from where you are able to build rpms.
It would make sense for example to set up a yum repository for these distributions so that system administrators do not have to take care of updating root by hand.
For Fedora Core there is also the option to submit packages to Fedora Core Extras.
In both cases every Fedora Core/SL/RHEL installation could easily install root with a simple command like yum install root.cern or something. The packages would be updated if needed during the usual system update processes
Are there special reasons that there is nothing like that prepared? Or is it just lack of manpower/interest?
liquidat
If other people are searching for the same:
It looks like there is no repository provided, but if you download the source version you will find a spec.in somewhere deep in the diretcory build/package/rpm
To compiel an rpm package, switch to the root source directory, and input this:
./configure --prefix=/whateveryouwant --ptheroptions
make redhatChange the other options and the prefix to values according to your system (so --prefix=/usr for Fedora Core for example).
No you will find a root.spec in the root direcoty of the unpacked sources which you can use. Make sure you have a tar.gz package of the sources with the right name, switch the “Copyright:” tag to “License:”, add the configure options you like to have, and check in line 489: there is a fi which should be commented out as far as I get it… not sure there, but I will digg into it a little more.
Nevertheless, with these instructions you should be able to build a rpm.
One last note: I wasn’t able to build the current stable version on FC4 due to several gcc4 errors - you have to replace some Makefiles and configure lines with the versions from cvs. After fixing errors for quite a long time I decided to give the development version from cvs a try, and it compiled.
liquidat
I’ve made some conclusions from recent experience about some of ideas you were discussing. In terms of using yum, rpms, apt, etc. my objection with using those is that you will end up with Root installed in your system, i.e. /usr or /usr/local. I’d prefer to have some seperate place where Root is placed, especially if you want multiple versions installed.
Apt acutally does have a repository where Root is available, and I tried this with my Ubuntu install.
As far as gcc 4 goes, I would just stay away from all that. I was running Ubuntu and gcc 4 and I installed Root as many different ways as I could and it always had a problem. I said screw it, and put on SL4.2 with gcc 3.4.4-2. Now everything works great.
I think I may even forget about using Fedora and go straight for SL.
Hej,
It depends on which aims you have: If you want to set up a specific test computer with different versions and want to take care of these different version by yourself (patches, security-fixes, etc.), than it does not make to much sense to install everything with precompiled packages, especially not if you are changing the system quite often and if you want to recompile it often.
But if you take my point of view, it looks different: I want to have an easy method to install keep up2date the newest stable version of root with minimal effort on some almost software-identical computers (that means the same distribution, login probably with a directory server, different hardware (x64 and x86)) - take a small lab or a department in this case as setup.
The advantage here is that a repository together with a package would make it very easy to take care that the newest (read: bug fixes, etc.) version is installed everywhere every time.
And the whole work like compiling, preparing, fighting with dependencies, environment varibles, libraries, etc. has to be done only one time from one probably more experienced person (with some help from the people here if needed). I think it would be a nice step to provide the whole, entire root system to other users, students, interested developers, laboratories and so on with nothing more than one single click.
And even if you want to install a specific version in this case, you still have the possibility to install local variants as well as different versions with special prepared rpms.
You mean a apt repository for debian? Nice, but I look more at Fedora Core or at Scientific Linux which is the official cern software plattform (or should be).
The first step would be to just provide prebuild packages in the right form - as rpm! There are already provided binary packages for different distributions and plattforms, but not in the way they should be provided for such plattforms.
The next step would be to provide a yum repository for these rpms which is very, very, very easy (you have to enter one comment on the ftp/http-server…).
[quote]As far as gcc 4 goes, I would just stay away from all that. I was running Ubuntu and gcc 4 and I installed Root as many different ways as I could and it always had a problem. I said screw it, and put on SL4.2 with gcc 3.4.4-2. Now everything works great.
I think I may even forget about using Fedora and go straight for SL.[/quote]
Well, again, that depends on what you are planning to do with the system besides using root. As far as I got the information right, the only real supported plattform is SL3 - SL4 is more half-supported because everyone waits for SL5, which will be a rebuild of RHEL5, which will be based on FC5
And it looks to me that the next RHEL and so the next SL is comming up with gcc4, and that is going to be the standard compiler for a lot of newer linux distributions in these days, so we can’t hide forever. And gcc4.1 will be released soon, and this fixes a lot of the old bugs which kept the people away from gcc4.
Btw.: even if I would like to stay away from gcc4, it is no excuse to bugs and errors in the makefiles and configure files which have some strange things inside. 
But nevertheless, there is now a discussion at the “bugzilla” going on about fixing these problems, and I will try to help as much as I can because I am the who wants this fixed 
Hi,
I am developing and building ROOT on my AMD 64 X2 machine under FC4 with gcc 4.1. ROOT works stable on this platform and compiler. If people have problems please let us know.
The rpm and deb packaging will be updated tomorrow courtesy of Christian Holm.
Cheers, Fons.